1796-1886 Asher Brown Durand Galleries His interest shifted from engraving to oil painting around 1830 with the encouragement of his patron, Luman Reed. In 1837, he accompanied his friend Thomas Cole on a sketching expedition to Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks and soon after he began to concentrate on landscape painting. He spent summers sketching in the Catskills, Adirondacks, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, making hundreds of drawings and oil sketches that were later incorporated into finished academy pieces which helped to define the Hudson River School. Durand is particularly remembered for his detailed portrayals of trees, rocks, and foliage. He was an advocate for drawing directly from nature with as much realism as possible. Durand wrote, "Let [the artist] scrupulously accept whatever [nature] presents him until he shall, in a degree, have become intimate with her infinity...never let him profane her sacredness by a willful departure from truth." Like other Hudson River School artists, Durand also believed that nature was an ineffable manifestation of God. He expressed this sentiment and his general views on art in his "Letters on Landscape Painting" in The Crayon, a mid-19th century New York art periodical. Wrote Durand, "[T]he true province of Landscape Art is the representation of the work of God in the visible creation..." Durand is noted for his 1849 painting Kindred Spirits which shows fellow Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant in a Catskills landscape. This was painted as a tribute to Cole upon his death in 1848. The painting, donated by Bryant's daughter Julia to the New York Public Library in 1904, was sold by the library through Sotheby's at an auction in May 2005 to Alice Walton for a purported $35 million. The sale was conducted as a sealed, first bid auction, so the actual sales price is not known. At $35 million, however, it would be a record price paid for an American painting at the time.  Related Paintings of Asher Brown Durand :. | Beacon Hills on the Hudson River, | Dance on the battery in the Presence of Peter Stuyvesant | Landscape with Beech Tree | Progress | Strawberrying |
Related Artists:
Jan Mabuse
c. 1478 C October 1, 1532 Flemish painter, b. Maubeuge. His real name was Jan Gossaert or Gossart. He may have studied in Bruges before joining the Antwerp guild in 1503. In 1508 he went for a year with his patron, Philip of Burgundy, to Italy, where he was strongly influenced by Italian art and ancient sculpture. He was among the first Flemish artists to represent the nude and classical mythology in a manner derived from Italy. His forms are solid and heavy, and their surfaces are rendered with smooth precision. Mabuse also executed some impressive portraits. The imperious attitude he gave to his subjects was highly popular in his time. A Donor and His Wife (Brussels), Neptune and Amphitrite (Berlin), Danaë (Munich), St. Luke Painting the Virgin (versions in Vienna and National Gall., Prague), and Jean Carondelet Adoring the Virgin (Louvre) are characteristic paintings.
William Turner of Oxford
British, 1789-1862 He probably received his earliest training from William Delamotte, in Oxford. In 1804 he went to London and became a pupil of John Varley, possibly being formally apprenticed. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1807; in January 1808 he was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and in November of that year became its youngest full member. He exhibited there annually from 1808 until his death, sending 455 works in all. His passionate, technically complex youthful work was highly acclaimed, yet its promise remained unfulfilled; around 1811 he returned to Oxfordshire and soon established himself as a drawing-master in Oxford.
Asta Norregaard
impression artist 1853-1933